Hope

UPDATE: Underneath the speech video is a link to the BBC Scotland news report, or rather the lack or reporting on the content of the speech. Impartial when they want to be, eh?

Just in case you’re interested. I’ve been a bit slim on the political front since the election – not because I’ve lost interest, but maybe on some level because I lost faith briefly. This kind of speech puts the faith back in me! And only 20 years old. Gives me hope for the next generation!

On a related tip, here’s an interview with Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, that Corbyn accused of stooping to sensationalist tabloid tactics. He’s the man my money’s on, in the spirit of progress – though most New Labour reformists will brand him as too old-skool Trotskyist, others have accused him of being a Liberal question-dodger. I think he’s a Socialist.

I’m genuinely gutted. That exit poll shocked me – what happened to the hope? What happened to the desire for change?

People bottled it at the last-minute. Same as last time. I thought we were past that “fear is more powerful than hope” after the Scottish Referendum, but apparently not.

My take – ignorance is the problem; people are too apathetic to realise what’s going on (of course, it’s in the establishment’s interest to have apathetic people – no one to notice what the government’s getting away with), people only have a superficial understanding of what’s going on (compounded by media bias and politburo PR) and therefore don’t consider issues fully, or people have been conditioned by pre-existing ideology that inequality and privilege is part of the natural order (awfully convenient if you’re already privileged and powerful).

Despite enabling a Tory “majority” (36% of the vote a majority makes not) the one take-away I’m happy with is Scotland – they actively want change and hopefully they’ll now get it. Localised devolution makes much more sense – I just despair for the Left-Wing contingent down here subject to the supposed will of the people under Cameron’s English National Party.

If you clicked that link about the election results, you’ll notice that 33.9% of the eligible voters didn’t turn out. I wonder how many of those people would have voted against the Tories? Whether the system works directly or not – until we have a self-reliant form of organisation we have to rely on the State to a certain degree, and by not voting we’re only letting the Fascists win: if you don’t say anything then your voice can’t be heard!

We definitely need a more proportionately representative system of government in this country, in the interest of accurately reflecting the public sentiment, rather than a sweeping generalisation. However, if that were the case then UKIP would have 83 seats in parliament, which is a terrifying prospect. So perhaps representation is only half the problem.

As a final thought, the Greens got 1,157,613 votes – 296,823 less than the SNP who got 56 seats – and only won 1 seat. There is an appetite for progress somewhere, but until we change the voting system we’ll be going round in circles. We can worry about stamping out ignorance later.